This is always what I hear, but the average American drives less than 40 miles a day. I don’t get why no one makes an EV with a small battery and ~100 mile range? It would meet the daily needs of most Americans and have like 70% less battery
The Renault Twingo has a WLTP range of 263 km. But that is what you want in order to have around 130 -170 km real highway range (cold/mild weather). Plenty such cars exist but very few of them are sold in the US. So these cars would not need to be created, they just needed to be sold in the US. Price point around 20k USD before tax should be realistic for these.
Because even though the average American drives less than 40 miles a day, they will not buy something with that low of range because the average American still takes longer trips fairly frequently.
I mostly ride a motorcycle and barely drive my car. When I do the average trip is only around 10 miles. But every month or so I end up driving around 120 miles round trip. A 100 mile car would be pointless because I’ couldn’t even make that trip.
Because of that cowboy delusion of being able to just ride (drive) off into the sunset is still a part of the cultural identity. You are correct, that consumer wise, this would be a very efficent and ideal product for commuters. The range would get you from Boston to Heartford, or Chicago to Milwaukee, to and from any suburb to the nearest major airport, but you could not just… GO. (Far off with John Denver playing on the radio)
Or, ya know, not everyone lives on the east coast in the most densely populated area of the country? How about the 50% of the country where its an hour drive between cities? I live in Oregon and am constantly driving more than 100 miles out of town to have fun with friends. Day trips are a common thing in the US, and I’m not buying a separate car just to drive to Medford from Weed.
Even when I lived in Portland or Seattle, I still drove like 2 hours out a few times a month to hang with friends or visit family. The US is huge dude, the whole country of Ireland is like the size of Oregon. When visiting family in Kansas, Colorado, Texas, or just most of the country, the distances get way WAY bigger for just daily living.
[EDIT: I stand corrected, the state of Oregon is twice the size of Ireland]
There are a couple like the Fiat 500 and Mini cooper EV that get around 150, but they also coat like $45K USD. Somehow the Chevy Bolt remains the cheapest option while still having 250 miles of range while also being one of the best EVs available.
But if you start looking at used cars it changes massively. You can get a 10 year old Nissan leaf that can still do 100 miles on a charge for like 3 grand. And early Bolts are also sub 10k.
I bought a used 2022 Bolt EUV in late February for $19k and my only gripe with it is the charging speed. It is incredibly rare for me to do longer drives, so it’s not a regret per sé, but it’s annoying that I didn’t do research on that particular detail. While the Ioniq 6 has 800V architecture which allows charging at 240-350kW, I’m stuck at fucking 50. For those who don’t know those units and just want real world figures, the difference is that charging from 20% to 80% takes like 15 minutes for theirs and like an hour for mine.
Most of my longer drives still aren’t that long though, so that’s just the situation where I actually charge up to 100% at home and just do a big charge at a meal and bathroom break like 3-4 hours in.
Just thought I’d make people aware of the caveat of the cheap Bolts, and how that still doesn’t actually matter most of the time. I would’ve paid more for quicker charging on the road even though it would affect only a couple of drives per year.
Yeah that’s definitely something people should be aware of, it’s certainly something that was brought up in every bolt review I read. But like you said it’s really not a big deal unless you are road tripping. I personally ended up getting a polestar 2 but that was mostly because it had double the power and a much better interior, but also cost about 8k more and has an abysmal service network that could collapse at any moment. Part of me wishes I just got the bolt.
I’m not American but the daily drive of our car is very short. However, if we’re going to have a car i want it to be suitable for the majority of our driving, which includes much longer trips every few months. I don’t want to have to hire a car or own a second one for something we do multiple times a year.
You don’t have DC fast charging infrastructure? For really long trips, there are trains or planes, but those middle distance trips are fine to just stop and charge every couple hours. Kia/Hyundais now are doing higher voltage on big batteries, so it’s like 20 minutes for 0-100% charge on a 350 mile battery. If they threw a 200 mile battery into that, it’s a 10 minute charge, but in reality you are not waiting around for that 20 minutes after driving for 5 hours; you’re taking a shit and eating a meal.
But the person above talked about cars with a range suitable for a commute. Do you want to stop and charge every 50 miles? I don’t. And usually those cars don’t have charging systems capable of fast charging (because they’re designed to be used exclusively for short trips) so it’s half an hour or more each stop. No thanks!
Fast charge infrastructure exists but has limitations. It is often:
nonexistent while the car park is being refurbished (has happened to me twice)
broken
full, with no queuing system
unable to charge at the speed the car is capable of. My car should be able to get over 200kW every time, in any weather, but I think I’ve seen it twice, despite usually using chargers that should be capable of more.
It is always a break in the journey whether you want one or not. If you want to split the journey in half to swap drivers, or to stop at lunchtime, but there’s no good charging there, tough!
Valid points. Idk if it’s international, but somebody on Lemmy recommended an app called PlugShare which basically is a rating app for different charging stations. You can see reviews and know what’s in service. I use ABRP to plot my route, then double check the recommended stations on PlugShare, and then actually navigate with Google Maps. Maybe that or a different tool could be helpful to you.
This comes up a lot, and as someone living in the US I genuinely can’t understand how anyone would cap themselves to a 100 mile range. I’ve been all over the country, from big cities like LA and Seattle to rural places in Montana, Texas, and Florida. No matter where I’ve been, I’ve always needed a car that could drive at least 200 miles for a day trip.
Currently in southern Oregon. If I want to go with some friends into the nearest city to do fun stuff or go to the mall, its an hour and 45 minute drive at 55 miles and hour. If I had an EV with a range of 100 miles, I’d have like 10 miles of charge once I got into town? That is not enough, and then I’d have to wait for it to charge before going home. That just wouldn’t work.
When I lived in Seattle, a pretty big city, I drove a lot further to visit friends because unless you’re wealthy, living with 6 room mates, or a student in dedicated housing, you can’t afford to actually live IN the city. Redmond, Issaquah, Snoqualmie Pass, Tacoma, are all a distance from the city proper, and often you’d end up driving around in those towns to do stuff after you made the trip. I don’t want to be stressing about having enough charge on the day-to-day.
If you’re buying a car, you’re not going to buy a separate car just to leave the city, right?
If I was saving $200/month on gas I could afford other modes of transport for the once or twice a month I need to go farther than 100 miles. Or I’d be willing to stop and charge my car for 30 minutes mid-trip if it was saving me hundreds of dollars in gas each month.
With modern battery tech, that “waiting around for it to charge” would take 5-10 minutes. Let’s assume that that 100 mile range car has a 30kWh battery (my 250 mile range car has 63ish I think). If it runs 800V architecture like Hyundai/Kia, it can charge at 350kW, but let’s round down to 300 for easy math. Even if you got down to 0% as you got to the charger (which you wouldn’t assume for a gas car getting to a gas pump, so that’s a stretch), it’ll be so fast to charge that it doesn’t even make sense to walk away to buy a coffee.
30kWh/300kW=(1/10)h=6 minutes.
I rounded in unfavorable directions, which probably accounts for losses, more or less.
“Sounds expensive,” you might be thinking. Nope. I’ve never seen it above $0.65/kWh, but again let’s round for easier math and assuming bad luck. At $0.75/kWh, that 6 minute 0-100% 30kWh charge costs $22.50. Slightly more expensive than gas, but this is presumably for uncommon trips, so charging at home where your rate is probably closer to $0.15/kWh the vast majority of the time will more than offset those day trips since that refuel costs $4.50. Even if every other charge were at that high rate, that’s still an average of $13.50 for a full tank. Assuming a gas car with 25mpg, that’s like paying $3.38/gallon on average. Not great, but better than reality right now.
If it’s more like every tenth charge is in the city at that high rate, then your average charge is $6.30, which is like paying an average of $1.58/gallon.
So it doesn’t take longer to refuel this EV than a standard gas car, and it’s cheaper than a standard gas car if you’re refueling at home at least half the time. The only real variable here is whether there is a charging station at the optimal location for your journey, and those are popping up everywhere.
In reality, I agree with you, but for a different reason. For battery longevity, it’s best to keep the state of charge at 20-80% most of the time. So I’d rather have a 200+ mile range to do my 100 mile trips. And that’s what I did. I bought a used Bolt EUV with a range of about 240 miles (down from 250 when new) and I charge to about 75% for my daily 90ish mile commute, and I get home and plug in at like 30%.
I’m actually out of town with my EV right now. I charged to 100% at home the night before, drove a little over 2 hours to this hotel, a bit over an hour round trip for dinner last night, probably about 30 minutes round trip today, and I’ll probably stop for a short charge on the way home tomorrow just for peace of mind. It’s nowhere near as big a headache as most people make it out to be. For most people, if you need to buy a car and you have the ability to charge at home while you’re sleeping, it doesn’t make sense to not buy an EV. Used ones are still cheaper than they should be.
Well damn, that’s a really compelling argument. I will say that I’ll probably keep my gas car for most stuff long range, but when my partner and I eventually grab a second car for logistical reasons, maybe I’ll look into EVs? Depending on how easy they are to work on. Honestly we were gonna seek out an old Tacoma since we are gonna need a truck for farm stuff soon. Idk, tough bid.
Thank you for taking the time to reply so thoroughly, genuinely.
I figure most families own 2 cars anyway; so if one was super cheap but had a 100mile limit; that would still sell well. Plus stopping to charge isn’t too big a deal
No problem. It’s genuinely interesting to me, so I like helping curious, open-minded people to be exposed to how it really is. I had my doubts until I learned more, and now I know that a lot of us have been manipulated into keeping the status quo.
I’m not a farmer or anything, so I can’t really endorse any EV to replace a farm truck. I’m not saying it can’t work, just that I’m not knowledgeable enough to speak on that. I’m assuming you’ll need good clearance and suspension, and that’s well beyond what my little roller skate of a Bolt EUV specializes in lol. But it can’t hurt to keep in the know because you’ll need another car eventually anyway, even if your research points to another gas car now and today. For most people, plugging into a standard 120V outlet is enough (like 3 miles range per hour charge), but it’s worth investigating whether you need to buy a level 2 charger and run a 240V charger (like 30 miles range per hour charge). Your driving habits will tell you what you need there, and it’d be a good idea to have that settled before buying just so you can charge at home from day one.
When it comes to how easy they are to work on, there’s really not much of anything to work on. No oil so no oil changes, no radiator so no radiator work, no transmission so no transmission work, friction brakes don’t wear nearly as much due to regen braking, there’s no mixing of fuel and air, there’s no compression or combustion, there are no spark plugs or gaskets or complications in translation. It’s direct power from battery to motor(s) to wheels, with guilt-free torque, so maintenance is mostly just wipers, headlights, and tires. I reset my trip meter just to remind me to take it in for tire rotations, and the last time I did that, the guy at the desk couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to charge me the $15-20 that costs so he was just like hey man, you’re good, see you in a few months.
A lot of my reasoning for the switch was for convenience. No complicated maintenance schedule, and no going out of my way to stop somewhere to refuel (except for on road trips). Just plug in when I get home, then go drive when I need to. It’s the most convenient way to own my transportation until we get real self driving or teleportation.
I drive out for a day trip with friends or to visit friends like every other week. Maybe I’m the exception, though all of my friends do the same so idk.
This is always what I hear, but the average American drives less than 40 miles a day. I don’t get why no one makes an EV with a small battery and ~100 mile range? It would meet the daily needs of most Americans and have like 70% less battery
The Renault Twingo has a WLTP range of 263 km. But that is what you want in order to have around 130 -170 km real highway range (cold/mild weather). Plenty such cars exist but very few of them are sold in the US. So these cars would not need to be created, they just needed to be sold in the US. Price point around 20k USD before tax should be realistic for these.
Because even though the average American drives less than 40 miles a day, they will not buy something with that low of range because the average American still takes longer trips fairly frequently.
I mostly ride a motorcycle and barely drive my car. When I do the average trip is only around 10 miles. But every month or so I end up driving around 120 miles round trip. A 100 mile car would be pointless because I’ couldn’t even make that trip.
Because of that cowboy delusion of being able to just ride (drive) off into the sunset is still a part of the cultural identity. You are correct, that consumer wise, this would be a very efficent and ideal product for commuters. The range would get you from Boston to Heartford, or Chicago to Milwaukee, to and from any suburb to the nearest major airport, but you could not just… GO. (Far off with John Denver playing on the radio)
Or, ya know, not everyone lives on the east coast in the most densely populated area of the country? How about the 50% of the country where its an hour drive between cities? I live in Oregon and am constantly driving more than 100 miles out of town to have fun with friends. Day trips are a common thing in the US, and I’m not buying a separate car just to drive to Medford from Weed.
Even when I lived in Portland or Seattle, I still drove like 2 hours out a few times a month to hang with friends or visit family. The US is huge dude, the whole country of Ireland is like the size of Oregon. When visiting family in Kansas, Colorado, Texas, or just most of the country, the distances get way WAY bigger for just daily living.
[EDIT: I stand corrected, the state of Oregon is twice the size of Ireland]
There are a couple like the Fiat 500 and Mini cooper EV that get around 150, but they also coat like $45K USD. Somehow the Chevy Bolt remains the cheapest option while still having 250 miles of range while also being one of the best EVs available.
But if you start looking at used cars it changes massively. You can get a 10 year old Nissan leaf that can still do 100 miles on a charge for like 3 grand. And early Bolts are also sub 10k.
I bought a used 2022 Bolt EUV in late February for $19k and my only gripe with it is the charging speed. It is incredibly rare for me to do longer drives, so it’s not a regret per sé, but it’s annoying that I didn’t do research on that particular detail. While the Ioniq 6 has 800V architecture which allows charging at 240-350kW, I’m stuck at fucking 50. For those who don’t know those units and just want real world figures, the difference is that charging from 20% to 80% takes like 15 minutes for theirs and like an hour for mine.
Most of my longer drives still aren’t that long though, so that’s just the situation where I actually charge up to 100% at home and just do a big charge at a meal and bathroom break like 3-4 hours in.
Just thought I’d make people aware of the caveat of the cheap Bolts, and how that still doesn’t actually matter most of the time. I would’ve paid more for quicker charging on the road even though it would affect only a couple of drives per year.
Yeah that’s definitely something people should be aware of, it’s certainly something that was brought up in every bolt review I read. But like you said it’s really not a big deal unless you are road tripping. I personally ended up getting a polestar 2 but that was mostly because it had double the power and a much better interior, but also cost about 8k more and has an abysmal service network that could collapse at any moment. Part of me wishes I just got the bolt.
I’m not American but the daily drive of our car is very short. However, if we’re going to have a car i want it to be suitable for the majority of our driving, which includes much longer trips every few months. I don’t want to have to hire a car or own a second one for something we do multiple times a year.
You don’t have DC fast charging infrastructure? For really long trips, there are trains or planes, but those middle distance trips are fine to just stop and charge every couple hours. Kia/Hyundais now are doing higher voltage on big batteries, so it’s like 20 minutes for 0-100% charge on a 350 mile battery. If they threw a 200 mile battery into that, it’s a 10 minute charge, but in reality you are not waiting around for that 20 minutes after driving for 5 hours; you’re taking a shit and eating a meal.
But the person above talked about cars with a range suitable for a commute. Do you want to stop and charge every 50 miles? I don’t. And usually those cars don’t have charging systems capable of fast charging (because they’re designed to be used exclusively for short trips) so it’s half an hour or more each stop. No thanks!
Fast charge infrastructure exists but has limitations. It is often:
It is always a break in the journey whether you want one or not. If you want to split the journey in half to swap drivers, or to stop at lunchtime, but there’s no good charging there, tough!
So range is still important. To me, at least!
Valid points. Idk if it’s international, but somebody on Lemmy recommended an app called PlugShare which basically is a rating app for different charging stations. You can see reviews and know what’s in service. I use ABRP to plot my route, then double check the recommended stations on PlugShare, and then actually navigate with Google Maps. Maybe that or a different tool could be helpful to you.
Yeah, I do use those. And it’s generally good! But I bought a car with the longest range i could abs don’t regret it!
This comes up a lot, and as someone living in the US I genuinely can’t understand how anyone would cap themselves to a 100 mile range. I’ve been all over the country, from big cities like LA and Seattle to rural places in Montana, Texas, and Florida. No matter where I’ve been, I’ve always needed a car that could drive at least 200 miles for a day trip.
Currently in southern Oregon. If I want to go with some friends into the nearest city to do fun stuff or go to the mall, its an hour and 45 minute drive at 55 miles and hour. If I had an EV with a range of 100 miles, I’d have like 10 miles of charge once I got into town? That is not enough, and then I’d have to wait for it to charge before going home. That just wouldn’t work.
When I lived in Seattle, a pretty big city, I drove a lot further to visit friends because unless you’re wealthy, living with 6 room mates, or a student in dedicated housing, you can’t afford to actually live IN the city. Redmond, Issaquah, Snoqualmie Pass, Tacoma, are all a distance from the city proper, and often you’d end up driving around in those towns to do stuff after you made the trip. I don’t want to be stressing about having enough charge on the day-to-day.
If you’re buying a car, you’re not going to buy a separate car just to leave the city, right?
If I was saving $200/month on gas I could afford other modes of transport for the once or twice a month I need to go farther than 100 miles. Or I’d be willing to stop and charge my car for 30 minutes mid-trip if it was saving me hundreds of dollars in gas each month.
With modern battery tech, that “waiting around for it to charge” would take 5-10 minutes. Let’s assume that that 100 mile range car has a 30kWh battery (my 250 mile range car has 63ish I think). If it runs 800V architecture like Hyundai/Kia, it can charge at 350kW, but let’s round down to 300 for easy math. Even if you got down to 0% as you got to the charger (which you wouldn’t assume for a gas car getting to a gas pump, so that’s a stretch), it’ll be so fast to charge that it doesn’t even make sense to walk away to buy a coffee.
30kWh/300kW=(1/10)h=6 minutes.
I rounded in unfavorable directions, which probably accounts for losses, more or less.
“Sounds expensive,” you might be thinking. Nope. I’ve never seen it above $0.65/kWh, but again let’s round for easier math and assuming bad luck. At $0.75/kWh, that 6 minute 0-100% 30kWh charge costs $22.50. Slightly more expensive than gas, but this is presumably for uncommon trips, so charging at home where your rate is probably closer to $0.15/kWh the vast majority of the time will more than offset those day trips since that refuel costs $4.50. Even if every other charge were at that high rate, that’s still an average of $13.50 for a full tank. Assuming a gas car with 25mpg, that’s like paying $3.38/gallon on average. Not great, but better than reality right now.
If it’s more like every tenth charge is in the city at that high rate, then your average charge is $6.30, which is like paying an average of $1.58/gallon.
So it doesn’t take longer to refuel this EV than a standard gas car, and it’s cheaper than a standard gas car if you’re refueling at home at least half the time. The only real variable here is whether there is a charging station at the optimal location for your journey, and those are popping up everywhere.
In reality, I agree with you, but for a different reason. For battery longevity, it’s best to keep the state of charge at 20-80% most of the time. So I’d rather have a 200+ mile range to do my 100 mile trips. And that’s what I did. I bought a used Bolt EUV with a range of about 240 miles (down from 250 when new) and I charge to about 75% for my daily 90ish mile commute, and I get home and plug in at like 30%.
I’m actually out of town with my EV right now. I charged to 100% at home the night before, drove a little over 2 hours to this hotel, a bit over an hour round trip for dinner last night, probably about 30 minutes round trip today, and I’ll probably stop for a short charge on the way home tomorrow just for peace of mind. It’s nowhere near as big a headache as most people make it out to be. For most people, if you need to buy a car and you have the ability to charge at home while you’re sleeping, it doesn’t make sense to not buy an EV. Used ones are still cheaper than they should be.
Well damn, that’s a really compelling argument. I will say that I’ll probably keep my gas car for most stuff long range, but when my partner and I eventually grab a second car for logistical reasons, maybe I’ll look into EVs? Depending on how easy they are to work on. Honestly we were gonna seek out an old Tacoma since we are gonna need a truck for farm stuff soon. Idk, tough bid.
Thank you for taking the time to reply so thoroughly, genuinely.
I figure most families own 2 cars anyway; so if one was super cheap but had a 100mile limit; that would still sell well. Plus stopping to charge isn’t too big a deal
No problem. It’s genuinely interesting to me, so I like helping curious, open-minded people to be exposed to how it really is. I had my doubts until I learned more, and now I know that a lot of us have been manipulated into keeping the status quo.
I’m not a farmer or anything, so I can’t really endorse any EV to replace a farm truck. I’m not saying it can’t work, just that I’m not knowledgeable enough to speak on that. I’m assuming you’ll need good clearance and suspension, and that’s well beyond what my little roller skate of a Bolt EUV specializes in lol. But it can’t hurt to keep in the know because you’ll need another car eventually anyway, even if your research points to another gas car now and today. For most people, plugging into a standard 120V outlet is enough (like 3 miles range per hour charge), but it’s worth investigating whether you need to buy a level 2 charger and run a 240V charger (like 30 miles range per hour charge). Your driving habits will tell you what you need there, and it’d be a good idea to have that settled before buying just so you can charge at home from day one.
When it comes to how easy they are to work on, there’s really not much of anything to work on. No oil so no oil changes, no radiator so no radiator work, no transmission so no transmission work, friction brakes don’t wear nearly as much due to regen braking, there’s no mixing of fuel and air, there’s no compression or combustion, there are no spark plugs or gaskets or complications in translation. It’s direct power from battery to motor(s) to wheels, with guilt-free torque, so maintenance is mostly just wipers, headlights, and tires. I reset my trip meter just to remind me to take it in for tire rotations, and the last time I did that, the guy at the desk couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to charge me the $15-20 that costs so he was just like hey man, you’re good, see you in a few months.
A lot of my reasoning for the switch was for convenience. No complicated maintenance schedule, and no going out of my way to stop somewhere to refuel (except for on road trips). Just plug in when I get home, then go drive when I need to. It’s the most convenient way to own my transportation until we get real self driving or teleportation.
If you want to go further just charge it and then keep going. Not really a big deal if you’re only doing that like once a year.
I drive out for a day trip with friends or to visit friends like every other week. Maybe I’m the exception, though all of my friends do the same so idk.
Also Zoe.
mini cooper electric variant is effectively what you describe. so is nissan leaf.